Is it ethical for a venture capital investor to praise a product put out by a company he’s invested in without disclosing his financial interest?

James D. Robinson IV, a founder of RRE Ventures in New York City, which is currently investing from a $280 million fund raised this year, did just that. RRE is an investor in Quirky Inc., Palantir Technologies Inc. and OnDeck Capital Inc.

Nine years of investments in efficiency and environmental sustainability have been good business for General Electric, even as the conglomerate prepares to take a major global role in one of the dirtiest of fuels: coal.

In a public “letter on sustainability” released Monday, GE Chief Executive Jeff Immelt hailed nearly a decade of what the company calls its “Ecomagination” program — an effort to direct research dollars into improving efficiency and limiting the climate-harming pollution given off by its heavy industrial products like jet engines, power turbines, and locomotives.

The program has been a great success, the company said, alongside corporate efforts to cut GE’s own power, water and fuel use.

Yet thanks to GE’s impending takeover of most of the energy assets of France-based Alstom — a deal championed by Mr. Immelt that drives toward a critical goal of his corporate legacy — the company could soon be a major global player in the business of coal-fired power plants, a major producer of the pollutants believed to cause climate change. Read More »

General Electric Co. said it won’t enter a bidding war with Siemens AG for the energy assets of France’s Alstom SA, but it is entering a public opinion war.

The American company is launching a new print ad campaign in French newspapers this week after its German rival formally submitted its offer for the French company that makes turbines for power plants and the iconic French TGV high-speed train.

“Demain sera Made in France,” GE’s ad says, under a sketch of an airliner soaring above a line of wind turbines. That translates to: “Tomorrow will be Made in France.” More on this after the jump… Read More »

Whenever General Electric has to replace Jeff Immelt, its board faces a choice — go with a rising star from one of the company’s most complex business units, or with a trusted and seasoned executive, whose selection might signal a shorter planned tenure for the new boss.

Among those who could be considered for the top job whenever Mr. Immelt decides to vacate it are executives who fit the former model — young insiders on the rise, with experience across multiple segments of GE’s business, people familiar with the company’s thinking said.

General Electric honcho Jeff Immelt missed a key financial target in January that he had set two years earlier. That misstep hasn’t scared him out of the prediction game.

In his annual letter to shareholders, Mr. Immelt Monday laid down bets on targets for everything from cost cutting to cash generation, emerging market growth to global infrastructure needs. Some were specific and some were directional. He even put out a target for operating profit margins for GE’s industrial businesses – which was the target he just missed in January.

We’ve embedded the letter at the bottom of this post. Among the goals Mr. Immelt set out in the letter:

Overhead
GE will reduce administrative costs between 2012 and 2016 by $4 billion with the aim to limit selling and administrative costs to 12% of revenue. GE calls the effort “simplification.” “Like many companies, we were guilty of countering complexity with complexity,” he said. The company seeks to reduce layers of management, and reduce the number of people approving decisions to no more than two.

A tidbit of good news for rail operator CSX bodes poorly for General Electric.

CSX said its domestic coal shipments rose in the second quarter from a year earlier for the first time since at least 2010. That uptick, which the company cautioned came off a very low base last year, was a result of a rise in prices for natural gas, which has utilities using more coal to generate power.

CSX said domestic shipments of coal to utilities increased 9%. CSX executive Clarence Gooden said on a conference call that the outlook for the rest of the year isn’t as rosy thanks to high stockpiles at many utilities, with domestic coal volumes expected to fall 5% to 10% for the third quarter and the full year.

General Electric Co. shares are down sharply this morning, despite headlines of a 16% increase in first quarter net income. One reason why is a big downdraft in demand for the company’s wind power technology and other energy production hardware.

GE, under CEO Jeff Immelt, has invested significant financial and human capital in an effort to expand its share of markets for clean (or cleaner) energy technology such as wind turbines. The company’s bet was that government policies aimed at cutting carbon dioxide emissions would lead to rising demand for energy generation systems that didn’t involve burning coal — technology GE could supply at a healthy profit.

Right now, however, demand for GE’s renewable energy gear has hit a downdraft. More in the full post. Read More »

Just weeks after the end of the TV show that made the building — and its storied relationship with corporate America — an international icon, 30 Rock is experiencing another finale. The building losing its ownership ties to GE, the company that has had a connection to the skyscraper since it was completed in 1933.

Liz Lemon and her crew put together their fictional sketch comedy in the building, where the real NBC owns almost 40 floors used both for TV production and corporate purposes. The elevator ride to visit Jack Donaghy took the fictional Lemon from the studios on the lower floors — NBC owns the first 30 — to the company-owned management offices high above, on levels 50-59.

From the time the doors opened, all the way until 1988, 30 Rock was known as the RCA Building, named after the electronics company that was set up by GE in the wake of the First World War. When GE re-acquired and broke up RCA in the late 1980s, 30 Rock become the GE Building.

Today’s $16.7 billion deal by Comcast to buy out GE’s 49% stake in NBCUniversal brings another phase in that relationship to an end. As part of the deal, GE will sell its real estate interests related to NBC — including the major chunk of 30 Rock owned by the network — for another $1.4 billion.

That means that just like in the show, where GE man Jack Donaghy had to grapple with losing his link to the mother company as Comcast stand-in Kabletown took over, GE’s real-life staff based in 30 Rock also need to prepare for a new boss in town.

GE, headquartered in Connecticut, has corporate offices in the building, which were recently renovated. So it looks like the company will retain a presence. But when those GE men and women walk into the tower once this deal is complete, they’ll experience something unknown to the company’s staff since the Great Depression: life in 30 Rock as a tenant, not a landlord. Read More »